


Old Men Ought to Be Explorers

by idelthoughts



Category: Forever (TV), Star Trek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Starfleet Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Henry almost two hundred years of witnessing interstellar travel before he worked up the nerve to leave the planet himself.  The fastest ticket to the great unknown:  Starfleet.   A future Star Trek/Forever AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Men Ought to Be Explorers

**Author's Note:**

> The inspiration to finally write this was totally all down to [pkmndaisuki](http://pkmndaisuki.tumblr.com/) and her amazing Henry Morgan in Starfleet fanart (especially [this one](http://pkmndaisuki.tumblr.com/post/114811394316/3-27-15-daily-drawing-84-lt-henry-morgan-pt-4), because I love the DS9 and Voyager era uniforms, I do I do).
> 
> And thanks for the title, [T.S. Eliot.](http://oedipa.tripod.com/eliot-2.html)

It took Henry almost two hundred years of witnessing interstellar travel before he worked up the nerve to leave the planet himself.

Over the years as the Federation evolved and expanded and humanity came into contact with the various alien races, his own long-lived nature seemed less shocking. There were beings who were practically immortal themselves, in terms of years lived. There were others who were not so easily killed, surviving the most horrific occurrences only to reform unscathed. Henry listened, observed, and gathered what information he could while standing on the sidelines of history, but nothing revealed any cases of other beings with the same condition as his and Adam’s.

There were exploratory missions leaving yearly to map the far reaches of the galaxy as warp technology improved and grew more reliable, each new mission bringing back fascinating reports of different types of life, and Henry hungrily consumed what he could access. Though after nearly six hundred years of life he should be a little more sanguine about such things, he still held out some hope that he might find someone—or something—to explain his condition.

Or solve it. He’d never admit it to Adam, but he still held some hope that there might be an end.

Adam chose to drop in on him every fifty years or so with little warning, and for little reason other than companionship, as far as Henry could tell. The reliability of it was comforting. They might be unexplainable even by the current level to which modern science had grown, but at least they had each other. Henry could have wished for slightly warmer company, but it was better than nothing. As the centuries passed, his dislike of the man had faded, and he’d grown to understand him more, to think that maybe his approach wasn’t so bad. There was a time when that might have frightened him, but now… Well, it felt inevitable. A man couldn’t face so much, see a world build and crumble and build again many times over without becoming a little inured to the vagaries of life. The detachment made it much simpler to focus on his research.

But there was too much information he didn’t have access to, a whole universe of knowledge waiting for him, much of it locked behind the barrier of Federation and Starfleet. He toyed with the idea of joining the Starfleet medical corps and joining the exodus out into the galaxy, spearheading the gathering of such knowledge, and possibly finding the answer to his singular question. 

He feared space, however. Cold, dark, vast. Deadly. There were countless ways to die in space. He didn’t fear the death so much as the reawakening. Where and how does a man who dies in the vacuum of space reincarnate in water? Would he be thrown countless distances to some random planet? Would there be any guarantees of it being class M, or would he be left to choke and die over and again, trapped in an endless cycle?

He obsessed over this unknown for decades, and then centuries. Eventually, when starships were practically luxury yachts compared to the initial lumbering, rickety buckets of their early years, his curiosity got the better of his reticence and he made his applications.

Entering into Starfleet’s realm meant tackling yet another challenge—that of data streams and record keeping. The world ran on endlessly stored information easily accessed by a mere question. Even a child could run an extensive search and call up every Henry Morgan to walk the Earth in recorded history. World War Three had erased much of his early life from public record, but since then evading official notice had become more challenging. After a fortuitous run-in with a technology expert in the early 21st century, Henry had grown to appreciate the services of data manipulation specialists, many of whose services could be bought for an adequate price. 

So far, he hadn’t been caught or exposed. However, his luck would run out eventually. 

It was growing time to consider leaving the planet he’d called home for nearly six centuries, and go somewhere that was less moderated and documented. Earth was home, but human memory was growing as long as Henry’s life, and the entire planet had grown as small as New York had felt after a while. Starfleet was an obvious way out of the closing trap. He could join, do his research, and then drift away when the time came. 

Yes, space called for many reasons. 

Starfleet Academy was enjoyable, in an amusingly simple way. He was considered old to join, most of his classmates fresh-faced youngsters dreaming of glory, along with the usual host of overconfident youth who had been certain of becoming doctors since they were old enough to learn of the profession. By the second year they were a more serious group, the lackadaisical and unsure weeded and washed out. Henry listened to many a student worry their way through school work and stress, but he did little other than nod and smile, existing outside their frantic, youthful world. After his life experiences, a few exams and drilled physical training was hardly much to get fussed about. In a mere three years he sailed through the program, closing on his goal without a ripple.

And so it went, until the Kobayashi Maru. 

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Henry froze. 

The simulation had demanded he be in charge of the ship, despite how ridiculous it was that a situation dire enough should arise that would leave the doctor in charge. They were struggling their way through a Klingon attack to save the cargo vessel when it became apparent that he was going to lose his ship.

They were going to die. Everyone in this ship was going to die because of him. _He_ was going to die.

He was going to die in space, and he had no idea what would happen. 

Henry’s hands were iron clamps wrapped round the armrests of the command chair, and his chest heaved with rising panic. It wasn’t real, but logic couldn’t wrestle down the fear, and he was rigid and unresponsive to the desperate cries of his crew asking for his commands. In seconds, the simulator exploded with light and noise, whiting everything out. It all faded to silence, explosions paused in mid-arc, crew frozen in gruesome death.

The holodeck arch appeared and the doors slid open, revealing the instructor, Lieutenant Xiu, who had a wry smile on her face as she took him in. Henry remained, still slumped in the command seat, struggling to control his breathing. The holoprojection crew and imaginary damage vanished, leaving the simulator pristine once more.

Henry finally stood on trembling legs, his adrenaline and panic having faded to a dull roar, and faced Lieutenant Xiu. She held a PADD in one hand and was regarding him quietly, sympathy written across her features.

“I failed,” he said. Amazing how much that irked him. It wasn’t the first time in his life, but he’d grown so used to success. But this—no, no one could win this. This was the impossible situation. “I was meant to fail.”

“Yes. Welcome to the no-win scenario.” She gestured for him to sit again, and she spun the navigation station chair around to sit across from him on the small bridge. “I’m more concerned with how you lost it at the end. It’s not like you, Henry.”

He grimaced, both at the fact she’d perceived his panic, and at the familiar use of his first name. Xiu was formal to a fault, fair and caring with her pupils, but not personal in her approach. He hoped he had not done something to derail his Academy training.

“It was—perhaps it’s a doctor’s prerogative to become upset when faced with losing his or her crew,” Henry said, reaching for the obvious. “I was…disturbed.”

“That is a terrible excuse. Usually you’re a lot better at lying,” Xiu said, smiling. “And the fact that you’re still this off your game worries me even more.”

Henry’s eyebrows shot up as he looked at the lieutenant. She was quite the formidable woman, around his outwardly apparent age. Competent, tenacious, interesting. They’d had many long talks beyond class time, as she was a xenobiologist by training and had fascinating insight he was eager to take advantage of. It was never more than that—after all, she was, in some capacity, his instructor. 

He’d not taken the time to get to know anyone deeply while in the Academy, sliding past personal connection with the ease of long practice, but perhaps Xiu had grown to know him better than he realized. 

“Come now, Henry. Your file said you were a doctor before the Academy, you know what it means to lose people. This was more than that.”

She waited, dark eyes watching and weighing his reaction, her black hair falling soft around her shoulders, and he realized that he rather liked her. She reminded him of—well, he couldn’t quite remember. She reminded him of someone, and he was sure it would come to him eventually. There was something in her quiet, direct persistence that called it to mind. His head was quite full by now, and the pathways of his memory could take time to wander down. Her empathy was compelling, drawing him in, as though she would listen, would care for what he said—

Jo. She reminded him of Jo. Oh, he’d not thought of her in so long. The memory of her hit him like a blow to the chest, and before he could think twice the words spilled from him.

“I wonder what it would be like to die in space. To die like that, so far from...” He trailed off. She said nothing, and he suddenly felt foolish, like a little boy confessing his fears of monsters under the bed. “Sorry. It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” she said quietly, leaning towards him, her focus intent. “Ultimately, we know very little about space. For most of human history we feared the unknown of the oceans, the water deep and beyond our understanding. Now, we treat space the same way—shipping lanes in the shallow, pathways to explore in the deep. But beneath us, many mysteries.” She stood and patted him on the shoulder. “A healthy fear, if you ask me. Primal perhaps, but reasonable.”

He was silent as he contemplated her words, ones that reached back to the very start of his immortal life, to the shocking slap of his first awakening. He’d known nothing then but fear and confusion, the deep and dark of the ocean his new womb, the world rewritten in the wake of the impossible. And yet, he’d made it through. He might not have known the rules, or how his immortality worked, but he’d muddled onward and made it. He’d continued to do the same since. 

Now, the rules were unknown again, and he was forced to face his fears anew. It was poking and prodding at his withered sense of self-preservation, reviving it and bringing back feelings he’d not experienced in so long. He looked up at Xiu, and she tilted her head to look at him, as though assessing his state.

“You’re as human as the rest of us, Henry. It’s not a bad thing.”

He struggled for an answer. He’d been witnessing his own slide down into the glassy unreality that Adam lived in for centuries now, and he’d started to consider it a given. Perhaps it wasn’t. Of all the things he thought he might find in space, he hadn’t expected the salvation of his humanity to be among them. 

“Thank you, Lieutenant.

“No problem, Cadet Morgan. Now, go take the night off.”

“Yes sir,” he responded with a light grin, already feeling more himself.

Space called, and he would answer. Whatever knowledge he found out there, it would be new. In a life that was as long as his, that was to be treasured.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [To seek out new life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8613331) by [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake)




End file.
